Chapter 9: The Artist

28 September 2025

To understand what was lost on the night of the acquisition, one first had to understand the radiance of Sarah Jenkins. She was a sun-drenched canvas, thick with the scent of linseed oil and the chaotic energy of someone who lived entirely in the present tense.

Sarah was twenty-four, an age that, in the eyes of the architect, was the peak of "biological plasticity." But to the people in Shoreditch, Sarah was the girl in the paint-stained denim shorts, with a laugh that could be heard over the rumble of the Overground train.

Physically, she was a study in warm tones and soft edges. Her hair was a wild, untameable mane of copper curls that she usually attempted to corral with a rotating cast of vintage scarves, though tendrils always escaped to frame a face dusted with a permanent constellation of freckles. Her eyes were her most striking feature — a pale brown which bordered on molten amber as they seemed to catch every scrap of light in a room. She wasn't slender; she was healthy, strong-limbed, and carried the subtle muscle of someone who spent ten hours on her days off, standing at an easel or hauling crates of supplies.

Sarah’s passion was not a welding torch like Jenny’s; it was a wildfire. When she wasn’t **** to be working at her office, she spent most of her free moments as a muralist. While other artists yearned for the prestige of galleries, Sarah sought the permanence of the city’s bones. She loved the scale of it — the way she could take a crumbling brick wall in a forgotten alley and turn it into a sprawling, psychedelic garden of native flora and forgotten goddesses.

For Sarah, art was a conversation with the world. It furnished her an escape from her mundane job. But she didn't feel that she painted for herself. She painted to make the city feel less lonely.

She would spend weeks on scaffolding, the wind whipping her hair, her skin smeared with cobalt blue and cadmium red, singing along to classic soul albums on a battered Bluetooth speaker.

Sarah was a creature of the senses. She tasted the salt in the air before a storm; she could identify a flower by the texture of its leaf; she felt the vibrations of the city beneath her feet like a heartbeat.

Her flat was an extension of her frenzied spirit: a cluttered, vibrant loft filled with found objects. Scattered throughout were dried sunflowers, smooth river stones, stacks of art history books with dog-eared pages, and hundreds of sketches pinned to the walls. There was a thin layer of sawdust and pigment over everything, a testament to a life lived without the paralysing fear of mess.

She had a circle of friends that was as eclectic as her palette. There was Mateo, the coffee shop owner who let her paint his storefront in exchange for endless double-espressos; Leo, a quiet cellist who lived downstairs and often played while she painted; and Chloe, her best friend since secondary school, a social worker who grounded Sarah’s flighty idealism with harsh reality. Sarah loved them with a fierce, uncomplicated loyalty. She was the one who remembered birthdays, who brought soup when someone was sick, and who would sit on a rooftop until 3:00 AM discussing the "texture of sadness."

Sarah believed in the Greater Good, but her version of it was grounded in human connection. She volunteered at youth centres, teaching kids how to mix colours. She borrowed the maxim that "there are no mistakes in art, only happy accidents."

In short, Sarah was a woman of deep, messy, beautiful empathy.

***

On the fateful night of her “meeting” with Rebecca, Sarah was at her happiest. She had just finished her largest commission to date: a three-storey mural on the side of a local library, which took her every weekend of the past three months to complete. The piece was titled The Bloom of Memory. It depicted a woman whose hair transformed into a flock of birds, each bird carrying a different book in its beak. It was a riot of colour, a celebration of the mind’s ability to transcend its surroundings.

She had spent that Sunday night celebrating with her friends at a local pub. The air was thick with the smell of cheap beer and sweat, the Sound Leisure jukebox was playing something loud and brassy, and Sarah was in the centre of it all, dancing with a glass of red wine in her hand, her laughter ringing out clear and bright. She felt invincible. She had finally left her mark on the world, a permanent record of her existence.

She didn't know that, a couple of tables over, a blonde woman with luminescent green eyes was watching her every move.

As Sarah walked home alone that night, her footsteps echoing on the damp pavement, she was humming the melody Leo had played on his cello earlier. She stopped for a moment to look at a small wildflower growing in a crack in the pavement — a tiny, resilient spark of life in the concrete. She knelt down, her fingers gently brushing the petals, a small smile playing on her lips.

"Alright, little one?" she called out. "You’ve got a bit of a view from down here, haven't you?"

She took a deep breath of the night air, tasting the coming rain and the distant scent of the ocean. She felt so incredibly alive. Her heart was full of plans — new walls to paint, new stories to tell, new people to love. She was a woman of infinite potential, a masterpiece in progress.

And then, a shadow moved along the pathway near Sarah’s building.

Sarah used her fob to get into the lobby of her building, just as the sky opened up with a torrential downpour. “Hold the door,” called a female voice. Sarah politely kept it open as the blonde woman ran in. She was drenched, and lacked an umbrella or raincoat.

Sarah smiled to the woman. “Nightmare, isn't it? Got caught right in the thick of it, didn’t you?”

The woman smiled back. “Yeah, I should’ve known better than to assume dry weather even at this time of year.” She tried to brush some of the water off her arms, and from her soaked trousers.

“You’re in a bit of a state, aren't you? Look, I’m just on the third floor – I can grab you a towel if you like?” Sarah asked. “Or are you going up to your flat? I don’t actually think I’ve seen you before.”

“A towel would be great. I’m meeting a friend, but I don’t think she’s home yet. Would you mind helping me?”

“No trouble at all. Cheers,” Sarah said, as she held the door and called the lift. The two women bustled in, and the doors closed smoothly. Then, while Sarah was pushing the button for her floor, the other woman pressed against her, and Sarah swore she felt a kiss, and then a stroke of the woman’s tongue, on the back of her neck.

A few moments later, Sarah felt a rush she had never experienced before, which kept her from saying something about the intrusion. And a few seconds after that, Rebecca pressed a small hypodermic needle into Sarah’s skin, and held her body as it went limp.

Sarah’s last conscious thought wasn't of fear, but of the wildflower. She hoped no one would step on it.